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About this programme

11/25. Michael Portillo embarks on the next leg of his journey, travelling from Newcastle upon Tyne to Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, along some of the earliest railways in England. He visits the first locomotive factory in the world, opened by George Stephenson, searches for the lost pit village of Marsden in South Shields, and is entertained by a comic troupe of rapping sword-dancers in Chester-le-Street, Co Durham.